Prabhergia mana, Mendonça & Signes, 2024

Mendonça, Maria Cleide De & Signes, Tatiana Cristina Da Silveira, 2024, First record of Prabhergia Salmon (Collembola: Tullbergiidae: Tullbergiinae) in the Neotropics with a description of a new species from Brazil, Zootaxa 5538 (3), pp. 283-289 : 285-288

Prabhergia mana sp. nov.

Figs 3–12 ; Table 1

Type material. Holotype: Female: mounted on slide No. 322a CM / MNRJ, Southeast Brazil, Rio de Janeiro City, the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden , 30.V.2019, M. C. Mendonça, G. C. Queiroz, T. C. Silveira and A. C. R. Neves colls. Coordinates: 21°42’37.20”S; 43°53’46.36”W . Paratypes: 1 specimen on slide No. 301 CM / MNRJ, 30.IV.2019 ; 1 specimen on slide No. 320c CM / MNRJ. 30.V.2019 ; 2 specimens on slide No. 320d CM / MNRJ, 30.V.2019 ; 1specimen on slide No. 320c CM / MNRJ. 30.V.2019 ; 2 specimens on slide No. 320d CM / MNRJ, 30.V.2019 ; 1 specimen on slide No. 321a CM / MNRJ. 30.V.2019 ; 1 specimen on slide No. 321b CM / MNRJ. 30.V.2019 ; 1 specimen on slide No. 321c CM / MNRJ. 30.V.2019 ; 1 specimen on slide No. 322b CM / MNRJ. 30.V.2019, M. C. Mendonça, G. C. Queiroz, T. C. Silveira, and A. C. R. Neves colls., at the same locality. All specimens are deposited at the Museu Nacional/ Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

Type locality: Bed with compacted clay soil covered with undergrowth and no litter, where the bees Epicharis analis excavate holes for reproduction in the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden , Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil.

Description. Body length 0.40 to 0.62 mm; holotype measuring 0.45 mm. Habitus typical for the family, elongated and subcylindrical. Color white, with no pigment on body. Integument with fine primary granulation. Body with ordinary smooth, acuminate, and subequal chaetae; lateral and dorsal macrochaetae longer; lateral Abd. IV and V with a conspicuous hump on integument. Pseudocelli clearly visible and arranged dorsally as in 11/011/11111 ( Fig. 3 ).

Head. Chaetae ordinary and subequal; antennae (60 µm) shorter than head (90 µm); ratio antenna: head = 1:1.13. PAO measuring 15 µm, with seven irregularly elliptical vesicles in two rows, with three vesicles are on anterior row and 4 on posterior row ( Fig. 4 ); Ant. IV (20 µm) with one subapical organite in a pit, six sensilla, four of them thickened and two thinner; Ant. III (15 µm), sense organ with two large, freely curved sensilla, opposed to each other, and one large exposed sensillum on ventral side; Ant. II (15 µm) with 11 chaetae, and Ant. I (10 µm) with 10 chaetae ( Figs 5, 6 ). Ventral part of head with 3+3 chaetae on the median suture and 4+4 posterior low bosses ( Fig. 7 ).

Tergites. Th. I with 4+4 chaetae (m1 to m4), pseudocelli absent; Th. II and III with three rows of chaetae, ms present, pseudocelli between p3 and p4 chaetae, sensilla in p5 position. Abd. I to V with three rows of chaetae; Abd. I–III with 2+2 sensilla in m4 and p4 position, Abd. IV–V with 1+1 sensilla in p4 position. Abd. IV-V shows more prominent pseudocelli than the rest ( Fig. 8 ). Abd. VI with 6+6 dorsal chaetae, two of them, odd chaetae and two anal spines (10 µm). Thoracic sternites II and III with 1+1 chaetae respectively ( Fig. 9 ); Ventral tube measuring 30 µm, with 6+6 chaetae; tenaculum and furca absent. Female genital plate with 5 chaetae and two slightly thickened lateroposterior chaetae; chaetotaxy of anal valves illustrated in Figure 10 .

Legs short (60 µm), Tita I, II and III with 12, 12, 11 chaetae respectively, tenent hairs absent; unguis short (10 µm), without tooth on the inner margin, empodial appendage rudimentary ( Figs 11, 12 ).

Etymology. The species epithet mana is given in honor of our colleague, Elisiana Oliveira (in memoriam) who customarily called us “ mana ”, the informal name for “sister” in Brazil.

Remarks. The family Tullbergiidae includes 235 species distributed in 34 genera ( Bellinger et al. 1996 –2024). Of these, only three genera: Tullbergia Lubbock, 1876 ; Mesaphorura Börner, 1901 and Fissuraphorura Rusek, 1991 , all with cosmopolitan distributions, have been recorded from Brazil. The genus Prabhergia comprised until this moment only three species, all from Asia, P. nayarii Salmon, 1965 ( India); P. indonesiae Yoshii & Suhardjono, 1989 (Sumatra) and P. imadatei Tamura, 1996 (in Tamura & Zhao, 1996) ( China). Comparison between Prabheria mana sp. nov. and the above species revealed significant differences, as shown in Table 1 . Of the three previously described species of the genus, P. imadatei , collected in the Xishuangbanna Botanical Garden, Yunan Province, China ( Tamura & Zhao 1996), seems more similar to Prabhergia mana sp. nov., based on the number of chaetae on the ventral tube (6+6), the presence of seta a0 in the anterior region of the head. On the order hand, the new species can be differentiated from P. imadatei by marked presence of 1+1 setae on thoracic sternites II and III respectively.

It is possible that the new species has been introduced, because the Brazilian Botanical Garden, created in the 19th century, received numerous plant seedlings from different parts of the world ( Bediaga & Drumond 2007). The finding of Prabhergia mana sp. nov. in the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden resembles the type habitat of P. imadatei , since both were described based on specimens collected in non-natural environments. However, these species differ in terms of their form of occupation and search for resources, considering that the Chinese species was collected in soil litter and P. mana sp. nov. in bee nesting holes, where its diet probably consists of fungi. Perhaps future information based on molecular data can improve our understanding on the processes of differentiation between P. imadatei and P. mana sp. nov. and their phylogenetic relationships with other members of the genus.

Figures

FIGURES 3–8. Prabhergia mana sp. nov. morphology: 3, dorsal chaetotaxy; 4, PAO; 5, Ant dorsal chaetotaxy; 6, Ant ventral chaetotaxy; 7, head ventral view; 8, lateral view of dorsal Abd. IV–VI. Scale bars: 10µm (figs. 5–7), 15µm (Fig. 4), 20µm (Fig. 8), 40µm (Fig. 3)

FIGURES 9–12. Prabhergia mana sp. nov. morphology (cont.): 9, Th sternites II–III; 10, sternites of Abd; 11, leg III; 12, unguis of leg III. Scale bars: 10µm (Figs. 11, 12), 30µm (Fig. 10), 35µm (Fig. 9).